Archive for October, 2009

So far four genetic Indians have won the Nobel science prize: Chandrasekhar VenkataRaman (awarded 1930), Hargobind Khorana (1968), SubramanyaChandrasekhar ( 1983), and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (2009). Of these only the first one, Raman, was an Indian citizen and the work done was in India. All others acquired US citizenship and worked in the West. While there is pridein the honour bestowed on them, there is also regret that our pleasure is vicarious.

India is still answering questions that were raised by the colonialists 150 years ago. When an Indian did well academically , he was declared to have overcome prejudices of his raceand declared a scholar in “ our sense of the term. Times of Indiaeditorially saw Ramakrishnan’sNobel prize as a proof , because proof is needed all the time, that“Indians are no less talented than people elsewhere in the world”.

Raman is the first non-White scientist to win the prize. It would have been better for Indian science if he had missed the prize. (He got it with the skin of his teeth.)This early honour has created such dazzle that India has been blinded to the reality of its pursuit of science.

Raman used to boast the prize winning equipment cost only 200 rupees. (There is some dispute on the exact figure he quoted.)Raman missed the point completely. The main point is not the equipment cost a paltry sum, but that it was easily available in the country. Modern science was still young and its infrastructural demands were modest which they could be met at the level of a college lab. This was true of Raman as well as ofthe physicist Jagadis Chunder Bose and the chemist Prafulla Chandra Raybefore him. Both were professors in Presidency College Calcutta which a century ago ranked among the best equipped academic institutions of the world. High quality original research was a continuation, or a short step ahead, of classroom teaching, as is exemplified by the work of Raman himself, Chandrasekahar, Meghnad Saha and Satyendra Nath Bose.

Science has progressed very rapidly since the second world war. The academic threshold for entering research is much higher than before.In keeping with progress in science, our science teachingat school , college and university levels should have been upgraded. Contrarily it has deteriorated

Basic science has increasingly become a child of high technology. India’s economy and industrial development do not have the intrinsic strength to sustain cutting – edge science. Since the recent economic growth has been driven by property boom and service sectors which are science-less, there is much less interest in science than before.

Indian education system has precipitously been made a part of patronage system. As many as sixteen central universities were opened with the stroke a pen. There have been successful street level agitations for more of them. Their location has been guided by real estate considerations rather thaneven semblance of an assessmentEleven of them do not even have a building to operate from leave aside a campus. The appointment of all vice-chancellors has been challenged in the Supreme Court. Are these signs of a country aspiring for Nobel prizes for in situ work?

Take the case of a small state as Punjab. Its capital, Chandigarh, has a university and an engineering college of long standing. Punjab already has afunctionalcentral post-graduate pharmacy university (NIPER), anda central science university (IISER) . A technical university (IIT) has become operational. On top of it, an all-purpose central university has been sanctioned in a far-off place. Are we talking of institutions of excellence or of cyber cafes and beer bars?

Ramakrishnan published his path-breaking three-dimensional map of ribosome sub-unit in 2000. Western recognition followed immediately. He was made a member of European Molecular Biology Organization in 2002; fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2003; and fellowof National Academy of Sciences, USA, in 2004.Curiously it was not until 2008 that Indian National Science Academy could bring itself to electing Ramakrishnan as a foreign fellow.

We do not have the self-confidence to recognize talent pon our own. We recognize it only when it is certified by the West. And then we deify the certified celebrities. We place them at high pedestals so that we do not have to listen to them, learn from them or put them to any use. We make them into two-dimensional images so that they can be hung on the wall and saluted. (They have not yet reached the statue stage.)

Contrast this with China. Ramakrishnan’s counterpart in physics is Shanghai-born Charles Kuen Kao for whom the prize has come at the fag end of his life. It is however remarkable that he was asked in 1970 to set up electrical engineering department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, of which he subsequently served as vice-chancellor (1987-1996).

Ramakrishnan and before him Amartya Senwhile moving from US to UK took a cut in their pay. Quite obviously to them research facilities and ambience mattered more than the pay slip. Indian university faculty and national lab scientists may like to keep this in mind.

If India wishes to become a Nobel prize factory, it will have to see beyond the current fiscal year or the next general election. Lord Rutherford in the 1930s compared biology to stamp collecting. Biology has come a long way since then; it is now a full-fledged lab science. The present and the near future belong to it.

Ramakrishnan’s own career graph is worth studying. He spent four years, 1994-1999, at University of Utah before moving to theNobel prize factory in Cambridge. Utah is not in competition with Cambridge. Rather it acts as a feeder. Utah’s vice-president for research has made a significant point: “ We do not have the money to hire the people who are already famous. We have to spot the talent and nurture it”.

Here then is a model for India. Set up a Cambridge-type national lab and surround it with Utah – type talent spotters and nurturers.//

There are two annual exercises associated with Nobel peace prize. While Norway announces the winner in October, India bemoans why Mahatma Gandhi did not win the prize.

If Gandhi’s assassination had been delayed by nine months he might have died a Nobel laureate. Would this have elevated his place in history? It would have been ironical if Gandhi had got as prize money that was earned by selling dynamite.

Gandhi was nominated five times. There were three consecutive nominations in 1937, 1938 and 1939 filed by Western peace groups and Norwegian parliamentarians. The processstood interrupted during 1939-1943 because of the war. Gandhi was again nominated in 1947, this time by Indians including Gobind Ballabh Pant, and finally in 1948 just a few days before his murder.

In 1937 when Gandhi’s name was first proposed, the prize went to an individual, Lord Cecil, founder of International Peace Campaign. After this whenever Gandhi was in the reckoning, the prize was either not given or given to an organization. For a long time the peace prize was a club badge rather than a world honour. The first time it went out of Europe and North America was in 1960 when the president of African National Congress, Albert John Lutuli, was declared the winner. Gandhi would have approved of that.

Sir Winston Churchill who won the Nobel literature prize in 1953 gave a glimpse of his powerful prose in 1930 while describing Gandhi: “It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.”

In London, Gandhi is said to have been asked what he thought of the Western civilization. Gandhi’s reply was: I think it would be a good idea. The implicationwas that as things stood the West was not civilized. The story is apocryphal; the said encounter never actually took place. But it is significant that the story gained wide currency and was considered believable.

South Africa-based Mohandas Gandhi, even as late as 1894, was a typical product of English education system haplessly appealing to the colonial sense of noblesse oblige.Finally he chose to squarely placing the West on the defensive on ethical grounds and for all times to come. (In fact, Mohandas Gandhi became Mahatma Gandhi precisely when he accomplished this.)

Europe of Churchill’s time could not have honoured Gandhi. The West has had to come a long way to recognize Gandhi as the author of Gandhian philosophy. By this time Gandhi was dead.

Gandhi was and is bigger than the Nobel peace prize. If he had been linked with it, the prize would have been enhanced. India has no franchise over Gandhi. India should not regret that Gandhi was not Nobelled. Rather, the West should introspect on its blindness of yesteryears when it was unable to recognize Gandhism.

The award of 2009 Nobel peace prize to Barack Obama is a new experiment. It is like advance payment for goods to be delivered.

A science Nobel prize opens up the field for future Nobel prizes. But peace is a goal. If all the Nobel peace prize winners in the past 100 years had actually deserved it , the prize itself should have become redundant by now.

Obama is the best thing that has happened to US and the world at large in a long time.For the sake of humankind one hopes he would succeed.

But at the moment the Nobel peace prize for President Barack Obama looks more like an honorary doctorate.